Don't Got The Guts Ch. 03

Colleen's heart went out to her. This old classmate of hers she'd made no effort to keep up with, not after college or at class reunions or through the foibled grapevine, someone who was now opening her home to a shabby dog and a shabbier stranger with nothing but unyielding effort and compassion. It was a humbling experience. What had she done to deserve any of this?

"Tea would be great, Em." She smiled back at her, a real one this time, without the vestiges of her earlier discomfort and awkwardness. "Thank you. This is wonderful."

Em chuckled, threading through her needle at the same time Colleen bit into a triangle of toast. "We eat a bit like rabbits here. Well, when we're not actually eating rabbit. Gordon's pretty handy with a shotgun."

"That does not surprise me."

A wink of mischief flitted through her gaze. "Military training. His dad was in the army, or so he says."

"Explains why he's so... regimented." Colleen swallowed quickly and scrambled for a different topic. "What's it like being married?"

A low whistle tided over Em's pause for thought. "Different," she settled for, diplomatically. "In a good way, though."

"Oh?"

"Yeah." She smiled a little as she mulled it over; tender and sweet, a look Colleen hadn't seen on her before. "The kind of different I didn't know I was looking for 'til it landed right in front of me. You know?"

Colleen's own chuckle was sympathetic, punctuated with the sweeping of crumbs into the center of her half-plate. "I guess." She found it hard to reconcile the image of Silvercrick's boisterous, ballsy Corn Queen with the domestic goddess sat across from her, streaked hair and silver eyeshadow traded in for prairie skirts and darning equipment.

"What about you? Was it like that for you and Alex?"

She let out a low breath. "To be honest... no. I can't say it was."

Em looked up at her, her grassy greens perplexed. Fingertips frozen on the steel.

"Alex was... sweet. And charming, and kind - knew how to laugh, knew how to get on with just about anyone." Her voice trembled as she tried to keep her emotions under wraps. "I was lucky to have him. But... he was never 'it' for me. That's not what it was."

Em seemed truly confused. "We all thought you were... you know, in love." Her fingers and tools fumbled through the cloth. "You seemed really happy."

Colleen didn't know what to tell her. 'Really happy' hadn't been in her vocabulary for years now. The closest she got to any palpable sense of depth or yearning was usually shroom-fueled or hopped up on the past.

Disgusting, perhaps, but undeniably true.

"It may not have been a love story," she said - carefully, honestly. "But it was real. I did love him."

And at some point, she thought she would have married him.

A bony hand with calloused fingertips reached across the table. Em's skin was dry, but also remarkably soft. She grasped her for a moment.

"I'm sorry, girl," she murmured.

For a moment, Colleen allowed herself to relish the forbidden comfort. Then she squeezed her hand twice, and shrunk away from her hold.

"Don't worry about it." She was back to her brief, ingenuine smiles; an old force of habit, her reliable firebrand against the rabble-wide witch hunt.

And it was the only weapon she'd allow herself to wield, because she knew that what they all said was true. That if it wasn't for her, her old fiancé would still be alive, and everyone in town would be better for it.

~

It hadn't been the most eventful day, but she was dog tired all the same. Amazing how often that happened.

As predicted, the clouds looming over Wychburne had gathered together like a doomsday choir and broken into cacophonous song less than twenty minutes after Em had pointed them out on the horizon. The men were soaked by the time they made it to the cover of the back porch, panting and sweating from being chased across the acres in crackling, static heat, dragging in all the colors of the earth with their swamped boots and sopping hair.

The storm only got louder as they day went on, reaching a crescendo of noise in the mid-afternoon and crushing what little chatter managed to sprout within the farmhouse. Ominous, guttural groans could be heard from the ancient water tower at the edge of the plot, and the telegraph poles lining the property started to shake dubiously in the wind.

Colleen tried not to think about it too much. She had asked, this time, if she could call home to check on things - before the phone lines cut out, before she was left stranded in a ramshackle homestead on the edge of all she knew and before she had a chance to tell her mother she loved her, lest the winds changed for the worst.

Her request had been swiftly denied. "They got enough to worry about, down there," Gordon stated with finality. "No need to burden 'em with an abundance of bad news. We'll be okay."

She had stared at him for a moment with outrage. Who was he, this backwards farmer, to tell her when and when not to call her mother? It wasn't like he could stop her, in the event she went against his direct orders, right? What a ridiculous notion.

But she decided not to test that theory.

Penny had been let out earlier in the day, she found - allowed to tread the perimeter of the farm with the men as they inspected broken fences and new measures needed for the chicken coop. Em had given her a rag to brush the worst of the mud off the dog's shins and paws, but great clumps of the outdoors still hung to her, dangling off threads of her fur and posing a probable threat of permanent stains to the vintage furniture, so Colleen requested access to the bathtub on the second floor.

"Man's best friend," Colleen had grumbled beneath her breath as she held the showerhead with one hand and attempted to wrestle the writhing Australian Shepherd with the other, "and my worst nightmare."

Her dad had gone to great lengths to educate her and her siblings on how to care for Penny, especially because her mother had been hellbent on evicting the dog the moment her dad had smuggled the wily bundle of fluff into their home without consulting her first. Even now, when she hadn't done much more with the dog in the past few months than nudge her off the sofa or guide her outside to do her business, practiced motions took hold in her reeling, vacant brain - test the water on the skin of her forearm; no more than a thumbnail of shampoo per rump, stomach and neck; rinse twice more than you think you need to and give her time to shake herself off before going in with the towel.

She'd even remembered to hug the dog to her chest whenever she got close to slipping up in the tub, singing George Strait to calm her down before she scrabbled up the sides and hurt herself. But she recalled the shaking thing far too late.

"Well, there goes my one good shirt, you ass," she said, laughing as she rubbed the towel over Penny's neck. "Now I'm gonna have to ask to borrow one of Em's hideous long dresses and look like a battered wife in a bad western. Is that what you want for me?"

Penny only barked, wagging her tail with enough velocity to coat the checkerboard tiles anew. Colleen couldn't help it; she grinned.

"Stop it, you. It'll embarrass us both." Wiping the towel once over the top of her skull and snout, she pushed the dog onto her side. "You don't wanna know what happened the last time I wore a dress."

She used long stokes with a firm and gentle hand to towel off the rest of her fur, humming Baby Blue low enough for just the two of them to hear. There was something inherently healing about all this - bonding with her dad's faithful companion, singing his favorite songs without having to succumb to the dreary sadness that usually consumed her when she gave in to the void he left. Part of her spirit bloomed like the crocuses, defiantly against the raging storm.

Colleen trailed off as she reached the thinning coat of the dog's stomach, and Penny kicked at her before she could get a chance to skim over the droplets.

"Really?" she asked with a chuckle. "Again?"

She shook her head and started once more, murmuring that soft lilting line about ladies and children, and drew the towel towards the dog's pinkened belly. This time Penny growled.

Colleen stopped, bemused. "Penny?"

The dog's eyes were blank, watching her intently, with one of her hind legs braced in the air. Presumably in case she needed to attack - again. Colleen was baffled.

"Relax, girl. We're almost done."

She lowered the towel, slowly, hoping to ease the dog's apprehension. But instead she was gifted a harsh enough swipe to rip through the sodden sleeve of her shirt.

"JESUS!" She swore as she peeled through the fabric, watching a thin streak of blood trail down her arm. "Fuck, Penny! What is wrong with you??"

The dog whined plaintively, ears flattened against the floor. She began to shake against the tiles.

Abandoning the scratch in her arm, Colleen shifted her legs to the side and leaned over, jaw locked with pain, hurt, some anger, but mostly concern. "Fuck, girl. Did you catch something out there? Get bitten, or what?"

Peering through the folds of her damp fur, Colleen began musing a million miles a minute at how hard and fast she would lay into Gordon Hawthorne if he'd casually neglected to mention - or NOTICE - a varmint on the farm attacking her sweet dog. Her blood all but boiled as she went over every blotch and scrap of skin at her disposal, being careful to avoid her stomach.

Her thoughts skidded to a halt as she came to an abrupt pause. Wait.

Scraping back some lone tendrils that had escaped her unruly bun, Colleen bent down to scrutinize Penny's abdomen.

"... No." Her eyes grew wide, locked onto that swell of pinkened skin. "You've gotta be kidding me."

And yet the swell stayed adamantly put. It was slight, but it was there - rolling with her shallow breaths, never fully disappearing. It couldn't have been anything else, because - Colleen's heart sank with the realization - Penny barely grazed her food bowl these days, only snacking on the morsels her brother fed her between long, lazy naps.

There was only the steady drip, drip from the bathtub faucet for a minute or so as the two of them sat in silence. Penny simply wriggled, trying to get comfortable, as Colleen, her furious heartbeat and uncharacteristically roiling mind gawped at her pregnant dog.

She slapped a palm against her forehead and let out something remarkably like Penny's growl.

"I'm going to KILL that fucking boy."